Social mediaU.S. officials barred from reviewing social media postings of visa applicants

The State Department today admitted the other day that “obviously things went wrong” in the visa background check for one of the San Bernardino shooters. ABC News reports that the comments were offered after an ABC News report which revealed that, as a general policy, officials do not check social media postings of applicants out of civil liberties concerns.

With this policy in place, the department’s officials who handled Tashfeen Malik’s application could not have seen her pro-ISIS postings and note her growing radicalization.

“It’s difficult to say exactly what [went wrong] and how, but for an individual to be able to come into this country — one who the FBI has maintained had terrorist tendencies or affiliations or sympathies at least for a couple years, and then to propagate an attack like that on our own soil, obviously, I think it’s safe to say there’s going to be lessons learned here,” State Department spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

ABC News notes that worried about backlash from civil libertarians, DHS secretary Jeh Johnson in 2014 decided against ending the U.S. policy which barred immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas.

“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis, told ABC News. Cohen is now a national security consultant for ABC News.

Marsha Catron, a spokesperson for the DHS, told the news service that months after Cohen left DHS, in the fall of 2014, the department began three pilot programs to include social media in vetting, but current officials say that it is still not a widespread policy. DHS is now reviewing the policy.

Cohen said officials from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) pressed for a change in DHS policy in light of the fact that social media  is increasingly used by followers of jihadist groups to declare their allegiance.

“Immigration, security, law enforcement officials recognized at the time that it was important to more extensively review public social media postings because they offered potential insights into whether somebody was an extremist or potentially connected to a terrorist organization or a supporter of the movement,” said Cohen, who left DHS in June 2014.

“The primary concern [of those who opposed changing the policy] was that it would be viewed negatively if it was disclosed publicly and there were concerns that it would be embarrassing,” Cohen said in an interview broadcast on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“There is no excuse for not using every resource at our disposal to fully vet individuals before they come to the United States,” Cohen added.

Cohen noted that the disclosures by Edward Snowden about NSA surveillance programs was behind the reluctance of DHS high officials to change the policy for fears such a change would further damage the administration’s standing with civil rights groups and European allies.

“It was primarily a question of optics,” said Cohen. “There were concerns from a privacy and civil liberties perspective that while this was not illegal, that it would be viewed negatively if it was disclosed publicly.”

Cohen said that optics and public relations aside, the decision not to change the policy was wrong. “If we don’t look and don’t review, we don’t know,” he said.

DHS’s Catron told ABC News that DHS is “actively considering additional ways to incorporate the use of social media review in its various vetting programs,” while keeping an eye on privacy concerns.

“The Department will continue to ensure that any use of social media in its vetting program is consistent with current law and appropriately takes into account civil rights and civil liberties and privacy protections,” Catron said.

In 2014, the U.S. government issued nearly ten million nonimmigrant visas, more than 40,000 of which were K-1 fiancé visas like the one Malik used to enter the country.